What tactics are valid hard counters to the Roman Shield wall formation?Anonymous11/08/18(Thu)21:02:19No.62921369

Horse archers, massed archers and hoplites would be my choices, what would you choose? Who beat them historically, and how did they do it? I'm interested in any mass combat rules you guys have relevant to this for any system in particularly, but I'm an Exalted fan myself.

>>62921369Depends on circumstances. Historically the Romans had problems with rough terrain like swamps and mountains. Romans didn’t like scouting and often did less of it than they should have, which bit them in the ass. Their large formations have trouble in irregular terrain, leading to modified formations that did fair better.

Open ground, flanking around them with horsemen if possible. Or for the ultimate win, forcing them to form a square formation and riding around them with horse archers and tons and tons of extra arrows to whittle them down with injuries. Battle of Carrhae, check it out.

>>62921430Cannons I get but battering rams? They could just move out of the way couldn't they?Flanking makes sense but unless you got all the way behind them I can't see how it would be easy to do. Hence my vote for horse archers.

Cavalry was always a weak point. Both because getting attacked by heavy cavalry or horse archers sucks when you can't move or risk breaking the formation utterly, and because the Romans in general weren't fantastic horsemen. They often left cavalry to the auxiliaries. Gaulish horsemen were pretty good.

>>62921658>>62921495Scouting was done because of course it was, but Romans were frustrated by “trickery” of ambush hit and run combat. See the Battle of Abritus as a repeating example of their inflexibly for scouting the terrain leading to ambushes.

>>62922258Imagine a line of people. The guy at the front fights for 5 minutes, then cycles to the back of the line to rest up and the guy that was behind him is now fighting. It was like this but massive rows of people.

>>62921369>Who beat them historically, and how did they do it?Well, the Germanics lured them into a forest where they couldn't form any battle lines and then the berserkers fucking ate them alive. Although part of that also has to do with the fact that the leader of the barbarians was also a Roman commander and frequent dinner companion of the Roman governor, and managed to secretly convince whole swaths of the Roman army to turn on their allies during the battle.

>>62921369The testudo is a meme (not that it didn't exist).The big thing about Romans is that they would always build a fort on the fly before the battle would start, and they were really good at that, with towers, ballistas, sturdy walls. It was like each battle was an home battle.That's why they suffered so much from ambushes.

>>62921369The Romans didn't necessarily fight in a shield wall. Read Polybious, the Romans fought in open order with each man having around six feet of open space around him. That one scene from HBO's Rome where they're packed like sardines and rotating is nothing but pure pop history.

>>62921369Good armor. The gladius is a sword so metal armor with full coverage would make it mostly ineffective. Then either fight in rough terrain or fight in open terrain using a lot of cavalry.

If it's just the shield wall with no support from archers or cavalry, then just bring those. They can't fight arrows, cavalry, and infantry at the same time without taking consistent losses and slowing down to the point they can't chase anyone leaving the melee when tired to be replaced.

TLDR to beat the romans efficiently, CATCH THEM ON THE MARCH and HIT AND RUN

>>62921389countered by javelins unless you armor the elephants. at that point you're investing too much in elephants and the romans field a wider front than you can

>>62921403they'd just cut themselves out, they carry daggers and shortswords

>>62921430cannons will work if you can get and protect them, battering ram is silly

>>62921454>>62921459terrain is not a problem for romans in battle order. they are well used to fighting in terrain, what actually killed the romans in those situations was being caught on the march. an army on the march is stretched over miles, and interspersed with supply wagons, camp followers and other shit that just gets in the way and needs to be protected.

horse archer spam works if you can stop the romans, and have literal tons of arrows ready. the romans at carrhae held out for quite awhile and were defeated by the superior preparation of the parthian general. he had camels laden with arrows running a constant supply for his archers. the lancers were also a critical part of it, they have to work in tandem with the horse archers.

>>62921695>>62921771this would very likely stop a pilum and looks intimidating enough to break a formation. unless the front line is suicidally brave this thing would get a great charge in.

>>62923436Which is contradicted by other works and by artistic representations. Saying that they fought in one way seems pretty reductive. Most likely, they fought differently depending on how the situation required, loosening or tightening their formations in order to combat other formations. This is the advantage of their fighting style. Flexibility.

Yeah, a full-grown elephant is about as close to a tank as you're getting back then. Pretty much nothing in the wild will go after an adult, because what the fuck do you think you're going to accomplish.

>>62921695Elephants are also horrible war beasts because of how smart they are. The Roman tactic for dealing with them was to funnel them into gaps in their formation so they could hit them from multiple sides. Alternatively, horse blood did a wonderful job of spooking them.

>>62921369Rome existed for a long time, and they used some form of heavy infantry with big shields until after their western territories were lost. They used that tactic along with fortifications and eventually artillery as their core forms of warfare because, at their hearts, they were good tactics which could win against just about anything in the right circumstances. However, for every enemy strategy Rome decisively countered at one point or another, Rome also suffered decisive defeat against at some point during their long history.In general however, there were some things that worked on a regular basis. A dense formation in the style of Greek hopilites could win against a Roman style formation with swords, javelins, and a looser formation if the combat took place on even terrain and both sides engaged from the front. This shouldn't surprise anyone. A good specialist unit going against a generalist unit in the specialist unit's core competency will win. Skirmishing archers forcing a legion to stay on their guard or be picked of until the legionaries became exhausted in a situation where pursuing the archers was impossible would have similar success for similar reasons. The Romans real weakness however was always cavalry. Roman's eventually recruited some auxiliaries who were pretty good light horsemen, but most of their rivals could fairly consistently defeat them in a cav on cav fight due to better equipment and better mounts. And once Roman cavalry was eliminated mounted archers could give them hell.All this is moot of course once you get into the last milenium of Roman history when the Roman shield wall had become totally obsolete thanks to more powerful ranged weapons and better polearms punching through their thin tower shields like cardboard and Rome responded by creating some of the heaviest armored horsemen the world has ever seen. History is weird man.

>>62921771The Romans learned that you don't have to kill the elephants, the elephants are running over your men because they are in the route of their attempted escape. So the Romans would just create elephant gaps for them to run through and they wouldn't be a problem for the rest of the battle. Elephants are still fuckin scary though, it is just that Romans could at least deal with them.

>>62924561that was a publicity stunt. Salt was fucking expensive and putting enough on a field or 2 to even reduce their fertility slightly was a massive national investment. The leaders wanted to show that their Nation was so fucking obsessed that once they had conquered an enemy and razed their capital (which was more wealthy and powerful than all the previous Roman holdings put together), they were going to throw away several years worth of a large nations currency just to ensure the site where the capital had stood would never support human habitation again.In actuality they immediately built another major city right next to Carthage any the fields around said city were the greatest source of grain in the empire for the next 1000 years.

>>62923990What artistic representations? Stylized artistic artwork doesn't always mirror reality. And here's the thing, Polybius was a military man. He was an officer of the Achaean League and he was also present in other Roman wars in Carthage and Iberia. It's not words that can be easily discarded since he wasn't an armchair historian but rather someone who actually had military experience and first hand experience. If he writes that the Roman usually fought in open order than why question the word of someone with military experience and who saw the Romans in action against various other people?

Does this board have a huge cross over with /his/ or something? I'm not complaining cause you can easily port a not!Roman empire into fantasy, just curious cause I've seen several threads like this over the past couple weeks.

>>62925306/tg/ was /his/ before /his/ existed. It was often considered an unofficial history board because a fair number of players play in some kind of historical or pseudohistorical campaign setting.

Additionally, due to the hugely wide-open nature of TTRPGs, /tg/ attracts a wider than normal variety of subjects that are on topic enough to be discussed. You see a lot of /sci/-appropriate threads too, and /x/, and /k/. /tg/ is the kind of board that can have a firearms thread, a history thread, a scifi thread, a thread of cult-classic vidya lore like Ace Combat or SMAC, and they're all pretty on topic and genuinely relevant to people's games.

Harass their baggage trainsHave small scale attacks during the night, causing them to repeatedly have to stand ready for a fight that doesnt happenLeave mutilated carcasses of animals in plain view of scouts, implying some messed up supernatural fuckery is afoot.

By the time you actually try to meet them in stand up battle, they should be exhausted, hungry, hurting, and just want to go home

>>62925306I didn't even know that /his was a thing. All I know is that stuff about military formations and ancient civilizations is pretty relevant to almost all aspects of this board, so it's really popular here.

>>62925691the Romans had a remarkable and unrivaled ability to have over half of their entire military structure be able to be sent into combat. In this respect they would be said to have almost no baggage trains at all. On the other hand, their fondness for building goddamn cities (and even farms) on the march, their love or artillery, and their tendency to campaign far into the ass crack of nowhere for years at a time meant that they had a tone of wagons to drag along with them and most of their soldiers were carpenters and shit who were capable of fighting in formation when a battle broke out but spent most of their time busy with other things.

>>62924322How about the other large beast of the time? Assuming Rhinos can be captured and either trained or directed how does the formation stand up to a half dozen of them charging? Will ranged weapons down them? will the weight, speed and torn only account for one very dead man per rhino?

>>62925691>>62925870fair point. In that respect, i'm pretty sure their baggage trains would be things that individual soldiers wouldnt carry, and while wouldnt be needed in the short term, would be very useful to have in a war of attrition in the long run. blacksmiths for repairing weapons, heavier building/siege equipment, large amounts of nonperishable foodstuffs (i'd assume that like modern soldiers, a roman legionnaire would carry a few days worth of food with them, but for extended marches/campaigns they'd still be depending on the chain of supply for most of their nutrition), and any extra armor and weapons not normally carried by an average legionnaire: swords, extra javelins, arrows, what have you.

>>62925965if Rhinos could be trained to accompany an army and charge together in the direction of the enemy nothing in the ancient world would survive it. The problems being obviously that Rhinos hate people and each other and are both blind and stupid. They can't be tamed, they can only be trained in the very loosest sense of the word and will ignore it the moment a new variable enters the equation, they cannot and will not distinguish friend from foe, they are highly unpredictable, and if 6 Rhinos charged at the same time they would run into each other before they ran into the enemy.

Cattle however could be made to accompany an army and stamped in the direction of your enemies. And when they made contact you would have very dead enemies. Problem is they would often turn around and kill you instead just like elephants. Horses honestly can only be made to charge enemy formations and not trample their own side because of millennia of breeding and training to achieve that effect and an instinct to only run where they can see coupled with neck muscles weak enough for a human to move their head and sharp stabbing bits gouging their sides and convincing them that running towards a wall of spikes is better than not running at all. And they still typically refused to make contact even with a soldier on their backs stabbing them and yelling at them to do so.

>>62926138the absolute stones on that lad>young man, basically put in charge of an entire legion>just repelled an attack by 7 foot tall wolfmen>possesses none of the magics inherent to his people>rides out to the frontline of the 7-9 foot tall hordes of wolfmen>calls out their head priest>insults the wolfman's honor and courage, essentially calls his mum a bitch

Then beats the actual war leader of the army, who is several centuries old, in a game of local chess

>le elephants maymayElephant's main advantage is shock value. After the first couple of times they're used against the romans they just start surrounding them and filling them with pilum. Elephants were and always will be a meme unit that are only useful in video games.

>>62921369Romans weren't just infantry scum, to beat them in one area would only serve to give them reason to reform their military to be harder to beat later. When their enemies navy beat theirs they built and trained a navy to win. When their enemies used horse archers and heavy cavalry they simply adopted both in to their own armies. When large field armies became less of a threat in comparison to smaller raiders they spread out their forces and adopted a defense in depth system.

I remember reading somewhere that some native tribes would gather up buffalo and other big planes animals, tie clay pots full of flammable substances to them, walk them towards enemy camps, light the pots, and send them panicking towards the camps, riding in behind in all the chaos.

I have no idea if that was a thing that actually happened, but i could imaging the pure terror and confusion that the defenders had to experience when an entire herd of 700 pound, flaming buffaloes rampaged through their teepees while those assholes they were at war with came up behind them and started attacking

>>62926510well, yes, any mammal can become attached to someone they know well and who positively impacts them. But Rhinos have a much smaller group structure than horses or elephants and they are very quick to attack strangers that bother them. Which isn't ideal in a military setting.

>>62926523elephants were used extensively in combat, Hannibal just had weak, untrained, unequipped elephants, took them 100s of miles through rough terrain and harsh climate conditions, and employed poor tactics when using them. The fucking British were still using them in India in the 19th century because when you start with large, well fed, well trained elephants in their native habitat, have people on hand who know how to handle them and don't use them for something they just wont do, elephants are great. Nothing else can transport that much weight through jungle or concentrate that much destructive force in such a small area. The thing is, elephants don't like being shot at and elephants don't like being stabbed, so the best way to use them is often to have them hang back and serve as a mobile firing platform that can see and shoot over your troops until your opponent is no longer in good order and a group of charging elephants will destroy them with little resistance.

In order to hunt elephants efficiently, Europeans went out of their way to create what would eventually become the predecessor to the armor piercing rifle because normal rifles didn't cut it. When WWI came around and the Brits needed something to shoot at Germans hiding behind steel plates, they grabbed the elephant guns they already had.

>>62923960>terrain is not a problem for romans in battle order.Tell that to forest areas. And arid plains. On the first you absolutely can't maintain the formation, so the main selling point of legions is out, while in the second the horse-mounted enemy (don't even need to be meme archers) can simply tire the fuck out of soldiers and only then attack.

Horse archers are a complete meme. Main reason why they succeeded with anything was lack of any half-decent cavalry on Roman side, or they would never be able of attacking in the first place. This is one of those times when being heavy infantry starts to be a serious disadvantage.

>>62926979>A spear or javelin doesn't kill an elephant, it makes it angry.It also makes it bleed. Two most common ways of killing elephants in battle:1) Bleed them to death2) Give them a heart attackSo if you happen to have some pigs and tar...

>>62927409>City was founded when "dude, we should focus on trade" guy was killed by "dude, we should focus on war" guy>Political careers and military careers are one and the same>One of the first civilizations to practice conscription>Their de facto patron deity is the god of war>Notorious for the adaptability of their military>Military belief dominated by superstition (if the crows circle this hill three times, we will win/ red ones go faster)Sounds about right

>Falx- The Dacian curved falx blade caused the rome bois to reinforce the strength of their helmets to stop their soft skulls from getting split open harder than Lucretia

>Scorched earth - the gaelic chieftain vercingetorix instigated one of the first recorded uses of scorched earth against Caesars advancing legions and if not for caesar surging georgovia and obtaining it's grain it may well have been successfu at starving out the legion

>Op Horse Archers and natty catties

Crassus was the wealthiest man in Rome due to being a devious land baron and formed part of the first triumvirate with Daddy C and Pompei . He however lacked the victories of Caesar and Pompei and so marched a legion to Parthia.

The parthians surrounded his army, shot them apart with horse archers and ran away when he went his cavalry after them. The Romans formed a testudo and then the parthians sent in their heavy armoured cataphracts knight and crushed them.

They captured crassus and gave him a throat fuck facial in the form molten gold.

>being germanic

There's some archaeological evidence to suggest that the battle of teutoberg forest was in fact an open land battle that the Romans lost to the superior Germanic forces. They then retroactively said they were ambushed to save face. Deep state alive. It's worth noting that the Romans never managed to cross into Germanic territory past the Danube and it was those barbarians who would later come and tear the empire apart. Likewise Germanic warriors were so terrifying emperors would use them as bodyguards exclusively.

>>62921459>Romans didn’t like scouting and often did less of it than they should haveAbsolutely fucking nonsense, the Roman military machine RAN on logistics and location intel. Romans didn't just show up for a fight. At their best they treated it like a fucking science.

Rome failed - when it failed - due to the arrogance of the commanding general or a lack of creativity. They hated ambushes because it was principally how they got their asses kicked - not due to a lack of scouting (how the absolute fuck do you 'scout' germania you nut? it's a literal nightmare forest) but due to a headlong rush for glory, certain their forces could overwhelm any odds once battle was joined because they were well trained and disciplined troops and most of their enemies were barbarian tribesmen. It was when they WEREN'T fighting Barbars that they tended to get a black eye.

People harp on about the fucking elephants but they only really featured in a diminished capacity in the battle of the river trebia and died after that. The real reason Hannibal won so many battles was an incredible grasp of tactics and strategy. For example in the battle of cannae Hannibal purposefully spread out his line in an elastic formation with a purposeful weak centre . He absorbed the deeper roman attack, his centre fled but his flanks alongside his cavalry forces that had beaten the opposing roman cavalry surrounded the deep roman formation that had fallen into the trap. His centre reformed and they massacred them.

More men died at cannae than in the battle of the Somme around 40,000 men.

>>62927533>The parthians surrounded his army, shot them apart with horse archers and ran away when he went his cavalry after them. The Romans formed a testudo and then the parthians sent in their heavy armoured cataphracts knight and crushed them.

Crassus had also been led out into the middle of nowhere for an ambush because he was fucking retarded, and the Parthians had mastered horse archery to the point they made a unit of them into what was basically an arrow machine gun. The romans being heavy infantry had no answer but to sit tight behind their shields while getting peppered and hope they ran out of ammo (they didn't). Finally they got fed up and Crassus tried to break out when his men were near mutiny levels of pissed off, and then got flanked and cut to pieces.

>>62927539>purposeful weak centre this echoes >>62927537Hannibal understood the roman thirst for glory and arrognace and knew if he presented a weak centre the romans would push, if not consciously than as part of the tempo of battle

>>62921369Romans developed many variations of the shield wall over time when the previous model started lagging behind in combat situations. It really depends on what kind of shield wall we're talking about and would it change into a different configuration during batttle.

Imagine being a barbarian countering a giant shield wall with rough terrain only for the shield wall to separate into hundred smaller shield walls that start circling around and stab you with their gladii.

>>62927539>around 40,000 menFrom what I can find, that's at best the casualties of the Somme if you look at only the German side. Austerlitz was actually closer to Cannae with 45,000 casualties (of which only 9,000 from Napoleon's side, though on the flip side Hannibal only lost about 6,000 if Polybios is to be believed).

>>62927539I'm no historian but it seems that to me his strategy and victories were enabled by advantage in cavalry. In every battle he won his horsemen routed Roman cavalry and closed the battle. Scipio had Numidian cavalry which defected to Romans and Hannibal did very sloppy job chosing the battlefield and utilizing terrain at Zama, very unusual for him. Elephants don't seem to be very important to his victories.

>>62927537>>62927533>>62927568You fuckers do know that Romans avenged Crasssus' defeat?They beat back army after army sent to counter them, then sacked the Phartian capital twice. Took the Phartian two generations to replace the lives lost inflicted by the Romans, which also paved the way to their decline allowing the Sassanids to take over. The prevalent tactic used by those legions was a simple>fuck you were up a hill

>>62926474My animal husbandry is weak and rhinos being the inbred assbergers of the animal kingdom is news to me. But that does certainly explain why we went straight for elephants.

The take away I'm getting here is using animals as fodder or a linebreaker is only going to work in a more fantastic setting where bullshit, history or magic allows for something like loosing the malbari

>>62922258>So, scouting was done but it wasn't?Reading comprehension you fucking brainletThe original claim was that the romans did less scouting than they shouldIf you do a test and you need to get 60% of the points to pass and you don't pass that doesn't mean you scored 0%

>>62921933They hated asymmetrical warfare, and were over-reliant on heavy infantry (an heavy inf that was the best around, with good equip and command, and optimized to be great in uneven terrain and in unfavorable conditions, whatever, they couldn't guerilla)

>>62921369the romans weren't good fighters just persistent ones.Surround them and make them unable to fightflank them, be a mobile force and wear them downbreak their formation like the zealots and force them to fight hand to hand where their shield is less effective.Or just out fight them, see phyrrus, many a gaullic invasion, most phoneticiansDESU rome sucks they were just crazy and had a lot of resources

>>62927452>>Political careers and military careers are one and the sameyeah that's not all surprisingAthens was the same, likely other republicsIt bough popularity and loot from the battle.

>>One of the first civilizations to practice conscriptioncitation on thatthe greeks and the hellenics likely did that during the archaic period to the classical one. and would draw upon slaves and resident aliens.

>>Their de facto patron deity is the god of warWhat?going to need a citation on that roman religion was a bit knackered.Or are you talking post republic like the unconquered sun? Neither janus nor jupitor was a god of warnor was Vesta or isis

>>Notorious for the adaptability of their militarythat's debatable the main power there i'd say is dicipline or i think that's what cato the elder said i'll check some citations

>>Military belief dominated by superstition (if the crows circle this hill three times, we will win/ red ones go faster)literally every civilization

>>62925870Most of the Baggage train was left back at the rudimentary camps, or at whatever town they were garrisoned in. Remember, after Octavian becomes Augustus, most wars the Romans fight are technically defensive, or fought very near bordertowns.

>>62924522I love late Roman armies. The Romans started copying the easterners and barbarians while the the barbarians and easterners started copying the Romans. Everything just started homogenizing into the same styles of combat being used by many different people. This soldier here, with a spear, long straight sword, simple maile armor, steel helmet, and large shield, is he a Roman soldier or a wealthy barbarian warrior? They all start looking the same.

>>62929412You know Julies Caesar hired Germanic cavalry as mercenaries, right? They destroyed Gallic cavalry at Noviodunum Biturigum, covered his retreat to Gallia Narbonensis, turned the tide when Vercingetorix sallied out at Alesia and continued to screen and flank the reinforcement forces, and even followed him in his battles against Pompey and beyond.

>>62931335>The Romans started copying the easterners and barbarians while the the barbarians and easterners started copying the Romans.

More like everybody else did normal person things while the Romans, in yet another attempt at appearing like normal human beings, copied them again. They were the quintessential NPC culture, if you go by recent natsoc memes.

>>62927805I think it'd be interesting to explore the history of the first Alerans discovering Carna. All that is explained in the books is 'legion strength army and it's camp followers show up, decide to genocide their way to the top, discover pokemon'. there's so much opportunity to explore their history.

and yeah, the Vord were interesting in concept, what with being literal space aliens, but the presentation got...crazy near the end

>>62923392Underrated post. It wasn't until the 300s that the Romans had any success whatsoever against the Persians, who regularly clowned on them with better heavy cav and composite bow using cav archers. The Romans didn't have a valid response until much later when their own cavalry got up to snuff.

>>62921369>Horse archersYes, it worked.>massed archersFailed IRL.> hoplitesRoman legionares had a favorable match up against hopolite armies.read up on their conquest of Greece

>Who beat them historically, and how did they do it?

Two means of doing so are cavalry based armies and fighting them in small engagements. This was proven early in the Imperial era and by the civil wars of the 3rd century the Roman did both of those things to themselves. By ~265 the old style of Roman warfare was fully replaced. See pic for details.

The romans greatest strenght wasn't some great secret weapon that nobody else could figure out. It was the fact that they invented the most effective system for training and massing large professional and well-armed armies. The romans won (eventually) because they could get more heavily armed and skilled doods on the map than you could.

>>62927533>Falx- >The Dacian curved falx blade caused the rome bois to reinforce the strength of their helmets to stop their soft skulls from getting split open harder than Lucretia

Not just the helmets, they had to reinforce their shields and add armour plating to their shoulders. The falx could split shields with ease and slice off limbs with its forward curved hook. The Dacians were fanatics who believed in resurrection and threw themsleves at the Romans.

It was one of the only weapons that drove a massive restructure in Roman Legionnaires equipment due to its devastating effects.

First you have Bronze age Chariot armies, the Dark Age (original and best) then you have Classical stuff, then it goes shit again but Cataphract-style things still exist. Then renaissance stuff goes like blocks....

>>62933484>The romans won (eventually) because they could get more heavily armed and skilled doods on the map than you could.As a consequence, they could bounce back from almost any defeat. As Pyrrhus found out the hard way, sometimes the Romans were better able to sustian a defeat than their enemies were able to sustain a victory. That's a very admirable trait of the Romans as a culture: the refusal to give up.

>>62933888Castles also were used to make forceful tax extraction cheap and sustainable once the economic surplus started shifting power within medieval society and the legal framework blocked legal tax hikes from being implemented.

>>62934166Yeah, just like how the English are generally more celtic than anglo-saxon. Then again, the English also meme the Britons hard (muh Boudica, muh failed rebellion, muh losing while outnumbering the enemy 4-1)

>>62933016>The mythical founders, Romulus and Remus, were the children of Mars. As such, the Romans referred to themselves as "sons of Mars".And Aeneas was claimed to be the decedent of Venus. all nobility and aristocracy claimed to be descended from gods.that to my knowledge doesn't point to them having claimed mars as their patron.I'm not specialized in republic era but given the gates of Janus, the isis kerfuffle during the punic wars and their proclivity towards the production of Etruscan style tripartite shrines during the kingdom and the republic it's unlikely that they would adopt the patronage of a singular god.

>>62933098>hopolite armies. read up on their conquest of Greecediff anon got a couple questions if you're willingwhat books would you suggest on that.I'm already doing work on the devolpment of the archaic hoplites and i was interested in some extracurricular readings

>>62933728>Chariot armies,don't think you really did, they would be likely be dismounting to fight if they are like the "kippies" [i think the name is]>>62933888castles were great man. it was a method of projecting power over the region, particularly economic and trade control.go read up on the bronze age greece for that, Mycenae was basically a castle town same with the other lacedaemonian fortifications

Not anon, but I have heard that claim before on certain youtube channels which specialise in ancient history like Historia Civilis and Invicta. As far as I know, this was certainly the case during the Punic wars. The Romans were constantly bitten in the ass because their horsemen were invariably rich aristocratic dudes who found scouting undignified and inglorious busywork. The Romans were terrible at cavalry, which is why their best cavalry always came from auxilia barbarians.

>>62936287>which is why their best cavalry always came from auxilia barbarians.Not even really a bad idea. If you suck at something, why not just hire guys who are experts at that? Especially if you've already pushed their shit in before.

>>62934321>>62934389Except the English and Scottish are mostly Germanic(Anglo Saxon and Norse) with the rest being Celtic, with normans and romans contributing little to the gene pool. It's roughly a 60/40 split between Germanic and Celtic.And don't forget the Caledonians were a Germanic group as described by Tacitus and there were german tribes living in England alongside the celts before the Romans.

The mostly Celtic areas are Cornwall, Cumbria and the borders near wales, the rest is mostly Germanic

>>62936287I didn’t say which wild totally unsupported claim I was referring to, but you got it anyway, then tried to back it up by citing ‘certain youtube channels.’ Honestly it’s better to just say ‘in my headcanon.’

>>62936531It’s all nonsense anyway. ‘Celtic’ and ‘Germanic’ are language groups not DNA groups, they were intermingled long before written language, and anyone talking about ‘60% this’ and ‘40% that’ is making shit up on 4chan.

>>62933484>The romans greatest strenght wasn't some great secret weapon that nobody else could figure out. It was the fact that they invented the most effective system for training and massing large professional and well-armed armies. The romans won (eventually) because they could get more heavily armed and skilled doods on the map than you could.This. Logistics and a big population size were the real strengths.

>>62921495regardless of the pikes against them, elephants around the Mediterranean have generally been a liability to both sides of the field and rarely tiped the scales. Really, they sucked as a weapon. They performed better as propaganda and psychological weapons.

>>62933356Depends on the era. Late Romans fought against halberds and did fine because they adapted their equipment and tactics to deal with them. Earlier Romans would loose to halberds and become Latter Romans because giant shields really only work if they are light enough to use and short one handed swords only work if you have functional shields. Halberds will wreck large thin shields and one handed swords.

>>62923724Never heard of things like the siege of Dura-Europos, Spartans using sulfur smoke to fuck with Athenian defenders during the Peloponnesian Wars, or all the shit they got up to in Asia during the same era?

>>62921369>hoplitesLearn some basic history about this shit before you make a thread, a hoplite phalanx is fucking garbage against anybody not retarded and the Romans changed from it to their more flexible system for good reasons.

Shit like this is why I don't come here anymore, /tg/ of all the boards I've frequented over the years /tg/ has the greatest difference between perceived knowledge and actual knowledge.You're all fucking brainlets who got their knowledge from shitty books, mostly shitty youtubers (shoutout to Easton senpai) and shitty movies, not being qualified to have 90% of the conversations you have is one thing but the fact that you all helplessly overestimate your knowledge and intelligence makes this the worst and dumbest board on this site.

>>62939819>hoplite phalanxIf you have some suggested readings on that i'd like them. I'm reading Van Wes and Krentz on archaic Greece and this keeps coming up because of how much of a meme greece is.

>the Romans changed from it to their more flexible system for good reasons.that would mostly be environmental no?Fuck i'll have to check the books i got here but the phalanx for some fucking reason is a formation that requires flat fucking ground in the hilliest fucking place in the world.I think some Persians were reported to have been laughing at the Greeks about that but again, i'll have to root through my books

>>62922587>>62930787Romans even used whistles for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ThyuGK4yUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0(First half is good, not that stupidity where the guy break rank.

He's probably gotten confused and is referring to the Insular Celtic cultures (Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales) who are indeed descended from such a small population that their inhabitants do share certain genetic markers. Obviously this has nothing to do with the millions of people of in Spain, France, Turkey, or Romania whose ancestors would've also been Celts during the Roman era.

Among other things, the Romans used 'Celt' and 'German' based on geography (or possibly affiliations) rather than on ancestry or language.

>>62932133one of the barbarian tribes that the Alerans deal with ride giant animals that are described as some mix of giant badger, buffalo, and probably one or two other animals. And the wolfmen have cavalry forces that i imagined as a rhino mixed with pure hatred and yaks.

So not elephants specifically, but some of the other groups have beasts of burden that when used in war served a similar function

>>62936789Plumbata hardly make shields useless they make them unbalanced and difficult to maneuver. This is a detriment to forces that depend upon individual fighting skill, but if all you're doing is holding it in front of the guy beside you, it's a minor inconvenience at worst.

I agree with your last point thoroughly. So often people think there's some magical special

The hidden truth, like so much I find nowadays, is in much less sexy details. The logistical capabilities of the romans in supply and in recruitment is perhaps their biggest asset far more than individual panoplies or training. If you look at Livy's account of how many soldiers the Romans could call upon by their Italian allies and subjects in 220ish before Hannibal arrived it is mind bogglingly large. 16,000 cavalry alone from Apulia (the heel of Italy). That is larger than the entire army of the Normans at Hastings, that is half the entire army of the Muslims at Tours. I am fairly sure Apulia alone provided as many cavalry as the Seleucids had at Magnesia, maybe a bit less or a bit more.

Now they would be largely unarmored judging from Apulian artwork, but that is still a single spot of Italy (and one far more rich in cavalry). The Samnites provided 70,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry if I remember right. These numbers are clearly inflated but they are astronomical compared to most other organized societies around the time of Rome which viewed warfare with some measure of privilege rather than obligation. The system of recruitment changed come the late republic and empire, but there was still the obligation of providing recruits given to various terms for barbarians who settle in the empire such as gentiles and laeti.

I've begun to question if Italian hoplites, excluding those of Greek stock, ever actually fought in a 'mature' phalanx. By mature I am referring to the scholarly work that considers the phalanx evolved from an immature form in the archaic period where javelins were utilized and fighting was not individualistic heroic combat like the dark ages but also not the rigid phalanx of the Peloponnesian War. The genesis of this is the Chigi vase found in Tuscany with hoplites bearing two spears. Since then I have come across:

1) A Veneti or Etruscan bronze plaque depicting an aspis-bearer with two spears (one with a smaller head, likely to throw)2) An Etruscan bronze plaque depicting the exact same thing.3) The litany of Campanian artwork depicting men dueling, sometimes with the aspis and very often with javelin(s) having been thrown.4) An Etruscan tomb painting depicting 3 pila next to 2 aspises. Coupled with offhand remarks about the pila seeming to have a more aristocratic/prestigious function in Etruscan tombs (like how the angon was found in more aristocratic burial sites for the Migration era), it leads to a problem - who used the pila among the Etruscans? If it wasn't the elite of elites who were horsemen, nor the elites who were cavalry, that leaves the less prestigious men who fought in the 2nd line with scutum and spear.5) The Javelin is the weapon par excellence of the Italians, recognized literally as such by a Roman writer who considered the spear the totemic weapon of the Greeks and the javelin the totemic weapon of the Italians. Archaeologists/scholars recognize the same and it abounds in Italic artwork.

Then I consider the fact that the variable that encouraged the maturation of the phalanx in Greece, as described by JE Lendon (a desire to purify the phalanx to allow for a raw and naked expression of martial vigor between cities - no random chance of a missile until the rise of the peltasts/psioli spoiled the game), never occurred in Italy. Etruscans weren't only fighting or primarily fighting other Etruscans or other city states. Campanians were not either before they got Oscanned.com. I seem to recall from skimming over Livy's stuff on the early period that you constantly hear about the storm of javelins and a case where a Roman fell into a river (It may be the famous one, Horatius Cocles) and the Etruscans pelted at him with javelins. That could be from the non hoplite Etruscans, but it could easily be from the hoplite Etruscans too. I also came across a remark by a Greek of the Etruscans coming upon the Greeks in a mixed horde of foot and cavalry. Could just be the bias of 'barbars', yet another Greek author was happy to describe how disciplined and phalanx-like the Carthaginians were when approaching the Greeks at Krimisos.

The chief handicap to my theory is if Roman accounts for the 4th or 3rd century explicitly mention the pilum was only carried by the Hastati and Principes. Though the reason for Triarii not carrying it anymore can be as simple as that they are now at the end of the formation where previously, as depicted in the Servian system, they stood at the front of the formation. You can still throw javelins from the rear but it just doesn't have the necessity as in the immature phalanx.

This is not one of the other bronze plaques yet it depicts once again a hoplite with three spears this time.

Victor Davis Hansen's "Western Way of War" is a sine qua non of Hoplite warfare.

JE Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts deals more with a sense of why the Greeks and Romans may have fought the way they did. Hansen deals with that as a thesis but he goes into very specifics of how the fighting style impacted/was impacted by various age, various levels of training and fitness, weather, agricultural considerations, the terror of the actual clash, how the clash was, ect.

"Storm of Spears" is a very scientific take that involves actual measurement of joules, length of thrust, a lot of experimental archaeology. Obviously you can take experimental archaeology with a grain of salt when it comes to fatigue levels but it has done the best job of convincing me for the underhand thrust a lot more than some British smug jackass talking head on youtube. Their underhand is also different than the 'low underhand' some depict. Rather if you've played Warhammer 2 the high elf spearmen are pretty much what it is. Rather than thrust lazily at the hip like an underhanded throw it involves holding it up near armpit level.

"Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor" deals with the linothorax, rather than fighting. It is controversial because it supposes glued linen rather than quilted. And it proposes linen where now the popular position is the linothorax was leather. This is a stupid controversy (next post)

because from what I can tell, re-enactors went from one extreme ("Leather was never used") to another ("Greeks never used linen, only leather"). There is a reference by an ancient author to, something like "the leather thorax, like the Spartans wear". I think there's another reference to leather or two. Yet there's an abundance of references to linen - not just by barbarians but also by the Greeks proper, such as in the Megarian oracle saying "The linothorax wearing Argives".

Tl;dr is that leather and linen cuirasses have evidence being used. Glue is more baseless as it was never found in an archaeological site or by any other cultures. I still think it's entirely plausible given how easy it is (basically just boil some rabbit hide or bones or some shit and you're good to go). That is a more heretical point of view but linen and leather were both used and anyone saying it was all one or all the other has no evidence to back up their exclusionary claim.

Viriathus, a Lusitanian shepherd who barely survived being sold off into slavery along with much of his people by a greedy Roman commander who told his people they were being relocated for a better life. He saw his entire tribe led away in shackles and swore vengence.

He became one of the fiercest guerilla opponents the Romans faced and his men were too loyal. Though they captured two of his men after years of failing to defeat him militarily and showed them a night of decadence and wealth that was available to those who sided with Rome. So they set the two guys free with a "You know what you have to do message".

They went back to Viriathus hideout and murdered him in is sleep. Upon returning to the Romans they were told that Rome did not deal with traitors and killed both of them.

>>62943800>but linen and leather were both used and anyone saying it was all one or all the other has no evidence to back up their exclusionary claim.

I think this is my biggest beef with armchair historians - the assumption of standardisation. The pre-industrial world didn't have fucking standards. Most people lived how they lived because it was how their parents lived, and most people never bothered to question it.

I think of ancient Greek helmets, as an example. There are all these different shapes of helmet that we know of, and we name them "Illyrian" and "Corinthian" because that's supposedly where the design originated. But the idea that people in Illyria only wore Illyrian-style helmets is ridiculous. You'd wear whatever helmet your local blacksmith was trained in making, which might be Illyrian helms, or it might not (especially if they were a foreign slave). And on the off-chance you were travelling in foreign lands, and your helmet was somehow lost or broken, why wouldn't you buy a local helmet? So long as it protects your head, and doesn't obstruct your eyes, ears or breathing (too much), then it's fine.

Same thing with fighting styles. People are so quick to say "oh, the warriors of [insert culture] fought in [extremely rigid, specific way] with [extremely specific assortment of weapons]", while forgetting that outside of Rome, there were no standing armies. A king would just call up their relatives, who would call up all their strongest men, and they'd all grab their family's weapons and go murder each other. Some guys might have fought with only spears and shields. But others might have carried a sword as a side-arm, or used a sword exclusively. Or an axe, or a hammer. It would be more likely that people would fight with whatever they were trained in/comfortable using, instead of adhering to some standard.

>>62932043The Roman response to the Sasanian Empire was just to copy their entire cavalry force and transplant it into the Roman army. While it did stop them from getting their asses kicked, copying your enemy on a 1:1 basis just makes you a peer. Which resulted in the Eastern Empire and the Persians just knocking skulls for around a thousand years with no real progress being made.

>>62932043>>62944430They handed Persians their asses regularly as early as 100BC. Heavy Cataphracts were not a Persian exclusive. Everyone with a standing state in Asia minor used it. If anything they adopted it through the Armenians who were regular Allies with Rome.

>>62944541Ditto with the Sasanians. The borders in the East waxed and waned once the Parthians fell. The Sasanians expended their military might taking all of the East and putting Constantinople under siege before being driven back with heavy losses on both sides. They burned every church on the march to Constantinople except the Church of the Nativity due to the image of the Magi above its entrance. Sasasian Persia had adopted Zoroastrianism as its state religion copying Rome and its adoption of Christianity.

As soon as a peace agreement was reached and the borders agreed on their usual position the Arabs exploded out of the desert and wrecked both Empires before they could recover.

>>62944656Sassanids anon, its Sassanids. And yeah, due to the losses of from their wars both got rolled over by the arabs.The Romans put more of a fight, but the best they can raise for their armies at that time were poor quality levies.

Yeah, I share that complaint with you. Way I phrase it is essentialism since it goes beyond standardization. Essentialism is just what you described, that idea of it being essential and absolute. X always did Y. A was always B. I think it can be from a point of ignorance since I thought Illyrian helmets were predominate in Illyria when I think they were actually exceedingly common among the Greeks in that 700-600s period and were basically the iconic helmet the way the Corinthian would be later.

But I think you're mistaken on that part about "outside of Rome" unless you are referring to the Celts and early Germanics where it is somewhat applicable but even there there seems to be evidence for some kinds of standing bodies of soldiery depending on the location/culture. You could almost describe it in a six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon situation, just here it's degrees from the king or summoner of the army. King calls up his boys (Nobility) and tells them to bring their men. They call up their boys (retainers, possibly also freemen less associated with the notable directly). The retainers may in turn have retainers of their own to call up.

Also I agree with you on the equipment part entirely. There were no 'sword only' units, no 'spear only' units save that spears were typically the weapon every man carried (whether he kept carrying it till it broke or throwed it is another question). And typically you wouldn't have the lighter equipped poorer cavalry in a separate corps from the heavier equipped cavalry unless there was a fundamental difference in doctrine or equipment: Unarmored Parthian retainers wouldn't follow around their well armored lords like a puppy, but Gallic freemen on horseback with nothing but a helmet if that would be in the same mass as their lord and his retainers clad in cuirass.

>>62944759>But I think you're mistaken on that part about "outside of Rome" unless you are referring to the Celts and early Germanics where it is somewhat applicable but even there there seems to be evidence for some kinds of standing bodies of soldiery depending on the location/culture. You could almost describe it in a six-degrees-of-kevin-bacon situation, just here it's degrees from the king or summoner of the army. King calls up his boys (Nobility) and tells them to bring their men. They call up their boys (retainers, possibly also freemen less associated with the notable directly). The retainers may in turn have retainers of their own to call up.

Oh, I get your point completely. I was talking more about there being no standard uniform or set of armaments, that all warriors were expected to wear and use. The sort of thing that a modern military force, or the Roman legions at their height, would enforce.

It would be more like a minimum dress code. So long as you didn't show up to battle completely unarmed and useless, no-one would complain.

>>62944845There were no uniformity both there are standard, in more organized armies.In a Legion you're still wholly expected to fight with a sword, shield and some throwing sticks or if you served in a pike phalanx you might were mismatched equipment, but you are still going to hold a long ass stick.A legionary in Caesars time might have worn armour belonging to an ancestor who fought under Scipio Africanus.

>>62944964Yes, but time progresses and some of those cultures are some of the most well organized states on earth. Order and rigidity is a necessary way of things for them. Also standardization is not the same as uniformity, their attitude towards sticking to those standard might not be as stern as today, but some must have and should have been maintained.

If you can afford to loose ground, then yes horse archer or at least mounted archers supported by heavy cavalry are a good bet.

If you cannot afford to loose ground until attrition through arrows does the job, you have to use ambushes.Romans were soldiers, not warriors.They were basically an invincible war machine when in formation and ready.But your individual soldier wasn't equipped and train to fight outside of formation.By taking them off guard, you get to slaughter many of them until they can get organized.You'll then have to retreat and try again.

Its both. Got into an argument with a friend over it and we were both right.

>The Sasanian Empire, also known as the Sassanian, Sasanid, Sassanid or Neo-Persian Empire, was the last kingdom of the Persian Empire before the rise of Islam, and was named after the House of Sasan; it ruled from 224 to 651 AD

>>62927539>More men died at cannae than in the battle of the Somme around 40,000 men.Not saying that Cannae wasn't an absolute slaughter, but like 300,000 men died at the Somme and hundreds of thousands more were wounded. That was spread out over months of fighting though.

>>62945118>>62945172The Pomerium is more extreme, but it reminded me of how "Paris" only has a population of 2 million despite the Greater Paris Area having a population of 12 million. The redivisions of city limits during the French Revolution were never really changed.

And then you have "London" and "City of London", which is a whole new level of freemason-tier retarded.

>>62921369None really. The whole point of the legion is that it was flexible enough to not have any hard counters. That isn't to say that the Roman Legion couldn't be bested, simply that it required some mixture of superior number, competence of the opponent, or incompetence of the Roman commander. While not quite the legions of the empire and later Republic the battle of Carrhae illustrates that the Roman military structure was far from infallible, even if it wasn't specifically taking advantage of an innate weakness in Roman doctrine.

>>62921771>>62921495>Here's something I've always wondered, how did elephants fare against massive numbers of pilae thrown in their general direction? I can't imagine many survived that.Elephants are really tough creatures.Here's a clip of some african tribal hunters hunting animals with javelins. They face off against an elephant at about 2:20.https://youtu.be/h_oGuUA2hgEApparently it takes a team of dedicated javelinmen repeated throws to fell an elephant that's not charging them.

>>62921658>>62921933>When you have no knowledge about the subject so you try to claim that the other person's reply is baseless but he responds with some argument to support his statement and you look like a bitch

>>62950365Except that I'm not the same person, there is basis in what he said though not generally. Simply dismissing it isn't a valid argument, I'd like to spend 20 posts with you arguing by quoting and mashing information based on books or references but I can better spend that time by shitposting other threads.

The main reason why Romans managed to be successful was facing either people with ZERO fucking military organisation OR fighting against weakened states that had no manpower to withstand the on-going grinder.Thus, the way how you face the legion is forcing them to break their formation, rather than fighting them directly and god forbid frontally.

Anna Komnenos was still doing that in the 12th century. She refers to the Crusaders as barabric Keltoi for most of her History of Emperor Alexios, then spends a page and a half writing with one hand (it was lonely in that nunnery) about Bohemond of Taranto's blonde short cropped hair, his chiselled marble jaw and his roguish demeanor.

Its like if the Spanish, today, talked about Aztecs illegally crossing the US Frontier. Her works are rather charming and also sad reading about the world rapidly changing around a crumbling edifice that hearks back to past glories and cannot see its time is coming to an end.